Who needs R&D tax credits? No one! As the year finishes
out, I foresee more sausage-making on taxes and reducing federal expenses to
avoid a sequester event. It won't be pretty, and perhaps Congress will just put
the whole thing off for a few months. When I am sequestered, my goal is to be
isolated from other people to avoid disturbances, allowing for quiet
contemplation.

It is on such occasions that I think about this column. Our
current troubles stem from a widely embraced entitlement attitude that is
wrapped in the utopian concept of fairness.
Taking has surpassed making in our collective consciousness. This
thinking evolved over 50 years, but has been rapidly accelerating of late.

We all take because others take, and it's about getting our
fair share, or preferably, more. As making goes down and taking goes up, the
pool we take from gets smaller and smaller. Proceeding along these lines has
resulted in an unsustainable machine, decelerating from the frictions
regulating business while complicating our tax system. The word cliff has been used appropriately,
and We The People (WTP) are heading for it fast.

Scientists fit the pattern nicely. We want grants and we
want tax credits as incentives that we surely deserve for life sciences,
climate research, alternative energy sources, nanotechnology and … After all,
science is such a tiny part of government expenditures.

Balderdash. To avoid the fiscal cliff and
climb over the mountain of debt will require several decades. We will not get
there until we moderate the entitlement mentality and return to being more makers
than takers. The principles are well established by experiments completed in multiple
countries over centuries, and the message is very clear. Government will have
to focus, as it once did, on doing fewer things well.

The private sector will have to focus on investment,
innovation and growth. Business must stop its own "working the system" with
that game we call crony capitalism. Large firms get away with this by threats
("We'll move our headquarters. We'll close our factories."). These tantrums
frequently engender a deal ("Here is your tax concession."). These temptations
would go away with a one-size-fits-all tax system focused on individuals.

No one with a brain makes an R&D decision based on tax
credits. We make those decisions to try for a competitive advantage. If we
don't achieve that advantage, we shouldn't expect to be partially reimbursed
for the effort just to have our butts protected in a plea for fairness. It
likewise is insane to tax the revenues of medical device companies, irrespective
of their profitability.

Is there a psychiatrist in the house? It makes as little
sense to tax business income as it does to offer tax credits for wind, biofuels
or R&D. Business taxes are taxes on employees, customers and shareholders. WTP
must raise revenue for those few things we need our federal government to do
for the common good, among them paying down our severe debt. The best way to do
that is with minimum friction from credits, deductions, preferences and
political donations. Broadening the base of individuals who pay (and businesses
if they must), reducing the rates they pay and simplifying the paperwork has
been overwhelmingly recommended by every bipartisan group who has seriously
studied the problem. It is time to just do it. Science and technology based
companies, energy firms included, should neither be punished nor rewarded more
than all the rest.

We now enter the time for giving thanks and enjoying the
shortest days of the year with traditional decorations, songs, feasts and hope
for a new year, one with the unluckiest sobriquet of the new century, 2013. Let's
defy that label, declare an armistice between political parties and actually fix
things for the long term.

WTP are unemployed because capital is unemployed. Capital is
unemployed because it foresees an unreliable future for returns. Allow capital
to do its work, and our economy would recover very quickly. We could start
paying down the debt with restrained spending with increased tax revenue. There
is no alternative if we accept survival as the preferred option. We will not
survive if we remain takers all. Enjoy the holidays, the purest of these being
Thanksgiving. It's better to make than to take.